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PACIFIC COAST WOODLANDS. 



We take the following from the San Francisco Evening Bulletin of 

 January fifth, eighteen hundred and seventy-eight: 



The question of preserving forests is year by year becoming one of 

 greater importance in nearly every part of the civilized world. The 

 well recognized connection between the extent of forest lands and 

 the amount of the annual rainfall brings the subject home to every 

 mind. In Europe efforts were made many years ago to prevent the 

 total disappearance of forests from the face of the land, and in Ger- 

 many and France forests have been planted which have now attained 

 great size. Germany has a forest law which insures the existence of 

 forests in the empire. At the time of the treaty of Westphalia, in 

 sixteen hundred and forty-eight, there was hardly a tree standing in 

 Pomerania, along the shores of the Baltic. This long stretch of sea- 

 coast was once covered by an immense forest of magnificent oaks. 

 But Sweden remorselessly cut them down to furnish materials with 

 which to build her fleets, and when that province pased out of her 

 grasp nothing but sand occupied the place once crowned with giant 

 oaks. The winds from the sea swept across the bare plain, driving 

 the yellow sand before, and gradually the character of the land was 

 changed from one of fertility to one of barrenness. The climate was 

 changed. The cold winds brought with them no rain, and a desert 

 was the result. But Frederick the Great sought to repair the rava- 

 ges of the elements by again causing a forest to grow along the coast. 

 He urged that the nation must raise either trees or sand, and suc- 

 ceeded in planting pine trees along the tract once occupied by the 

 oak forest. The change was marked. The country once again began 

 to take on a fresh and vigorous look. The sand was soon replaced 

 by a fertile soil. In course of time the pines were cut out, but in 

 their places up sprang the old oak forest of the by-gone age. Prussia 

 expends annually a large amount upon her forests, but the income 

 from them exceeds the expenses by about seven million dollars. In 

 France, Louis Napoleon expended many millions of francs in planting 

 a forest in a barren portion of the coast bordering upon the Mediter- 

 ranean. Gradually the character of the land changed here as it had on 

 the shores of the Baltic, and in time a fine soil was produced. There 

 are many portions of the earth once covered with forests and abound- 

 ing in fertile fields, that are now bare and desolate, owing to the 

 removal of the trees. 



The forests of Europe are estimated at five hundred million acres, 

 or twenty per cent, of the whole area of the continent. In North 

 America there are one billion four hundred and sixty million acres 

 of timber land, of which five hundred and sixty millions are south 

 of the British possessions. The proportion of forest land to the total 

 area is twenty-one per cent. In South America seven hundred mil- 

 lion acres are covered with forests. Supposing that twenty per cent, 

 of Africa, Australia, and Asia is covered with timber, we have as a 

 grand total of the timber lands of the world seven millions seven 



